Of Suitcases and Love.

Finding a love mate is pretty much like buying a suitcase.

One fine evening you visit a particular shop, look around and suddenly spot a particular suitcase you just can’t take your eyes off. You survey it trying to look intelligent and experienced, as if you have been buying suitcases all your life. You check on the quality, the material, the color, the durability. You tend to assess its reliability. You tend to take your best friend’s opinion. You suddenly imagine making a world tour, proudly showing it off. You check on the company. You check on the warranty period. You check on the price tag and are left in a dilemma. You know that it’s too expensive for you to afford. Yet you simply cannot bear the thought of leaving the shop without it.

You leave the shop, yet you can’t let the thoughts of the suitcase leave your mind. You try in vain to forget all about it, deciding that you could do with a less expensive one. After all, all you need to carry are a few clothes and a few books. You go to sleep deciding that you are better off without that particular one. Yet the very next morning, the thoughts of that particular one keep coming back and haunting you.

You have two options henceforth.

1st option: You spend a month making market surveys to find out reasons why you could do without it, doing everything to take your mind off that one. At the end of a month, you decide that you could not handle the pain anymore. What’s the use of such a life if you cannot afford a suitcase of your choice? Determined, you wear your best clothes, take out some extra cash from the bank, look your most confident self, and enter the shop, only to find the suitcase gone. Some customer had bought it a few days back. And no, there’s no second one of that particular model available, though the shop has been freshly stocked with hundreds of other ones with different colors and materials and designs, many of far superior quality and may be cheaper prices. Yet that one particular model is gone. You ask in vain if there would be fresh stocks arriving soon. Yet at the back of your mind, you know that it’s gone. Forever.

2nd option: You get impulsive, take out money from the bank the very next morning, go to the shop and buy it. You still don’t know if it’s worth the money and if you could strike a better bargain. Yet you are past caring. You have what you wanted, and that’s all that matters to you.

Now substitute the word suitcase with a man. It sometimes (though on very rare occasions) happens that you suddenly like a particular man for some particular reason, even if you people haven’t known each other very well. You know it doesn’t really make sense. Yet you suddenly feel a certain chemistry, a certain force of attraction, and every single man in the room ceases to shrink into being non existent for you. You know that this is crazy and that you are not really equipped to handle a relationship at this point of time. You aren’t sure if you are doing the right thing. So you keep analyzing the situation left and right, up and down. You try to find out umpteen reasons why it could end up in a disaster. You are scared of getting hurt. You have reached the age when you stop believing in love and you know that it is just one of the many routine processes you have to perform in life, culminating into marriage and kids and whatever. I mean a lot many people marry without love and then get used to the situation. You don’t really need to fall for anyone, let alone a person you have hardly known, at this point of time.

1st option: You spend your nights thinking and analyzing and finding ways to overcome the pull. You know this might not be the right thing to do knowing that you might always end up hurt. Your priorities are different. You don’t really need the unwanted hassles of relationships. You wait for him to make the first move since despite your modern thoughts, you don't think its appropriate for the lady to make the first move. You convince yourself of these facts for 29 nights. On the 30th morning, you dress up all prim and proper, ready to convey your feelings. You meet him over lunch. You guys get to talk and he excitedly tells you how he met a girl in the same party he met you a month back and how they got to be friends and how they are thinking seriously about things. Wham!!!! You see your dreams shattering into a million fragments and disappearing. Even the thought of having spent 29 nights pondering over it seems like a waste now.

2nd option: You decide to get impulsive and confront him. You aren’t worried about the outcome. Even if the answer is going to be a no, you would at least not spend further time and waste your energy thinking about the whole issue. And if it turns out to be a yes, then nothing better. You know that he isn’t a many things you want, and he is many a things you don’t want. Yet nothing really matters anymore.

We are always facing this dilemma in life, undecided about things. Most of the time, we don’t state things clearly. If we did, we could have saved ourselves from heartbreak. Yet we decide to keep things to ourselves and take our own sweet time to come up with a conclusion we should have come to months back. The possibility of getting a thing or not getting it always remains. Yet this way, we somehow increase the probability of not getting a particular thing we wish to have. And live to regret our actions (or the lack of it).

Maybe I need to take a lesson out of this post and talk to him soon. After all, I don’t really wish to increase my chances of hearing a no. I know this is crazy, but sometimes you have to get out of that logic-mode and let impulses take over.

I’ll meet him and talk to him on Monday after school. Wish me luck. I’ve just realized that I cannot do without he knowing about it.

I've never felt this impulsive about things. I need his help now. I’ve finally realized that I just cannot do without the deep blue Gior Dano cabin bag I’d seen in that showroom at Esplanade last week. Never mind the fact that it's exorbitantly priced. And the salesman of the showroom should be the first person to know this. Don't you think so?

sunshine.